We're talking about a 21 year old kid in his first taste of major league pitching. I don't think his strikeout rate is really indicative of anything. His career minor league K/AB is 350/1216 or .288. His major league rate was 95/213 or .446. There is no way he's anywhere near that bad. Even if we assume his major league career K/AB will be worse than his minor league rate, and even if we further assume that next year will be worse than the one after that or his prime, I'd bet the farm that he's nowhere near .446 in 2015. That's an absurd rate and is probably much more to do with him being promoted so fast (and young) than his actual talent level.
What we do know for sure is that he has some of the best bat speed in the majors already. That's something you bet hard on. Yes, he'll always strike out a lot. No, he'll never be a high OBP hitter. But the upside is enormous even with those dings in the armor. I'm guessing he ends up with a lower than league average OBP in 2015. Even with that, however, I think he could be an average bat for the position because of his power. If the Cubs are lucky, he'll end up slightly above average at the plate. If they pull off something like trading for Zimmerman, signing a front of the rotation starter like Lester or Scherzer, a catcher like Russell Martin and then grab Andrew Miller, they'll have added around 70 million to their payroll and made themselves contenders for the NL Central. In that scenario, they don't need more than average overall production from shortstop. They'd like it, but weighing Baez's future potential against what would, at that point, be an incremental improvement at the position makes it tough to pick the latter over the former, IMO.
